[HPFGU-OTChatter] Historical Imagination (was Re: J.K. Rowling's fav books)

[Sheryll Townsend]

--- Ebony AKA AngieJ <ebonyink at hotmail.com> wrote:
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., tabouli at u... wrote:
> > I tend to take the "read it in the context of the
> values of the 
> time"  view on these issues.  I confess (she says,
> conscious that 
> she's wading in perilous waters here) to a certain
> irritation with 
> people> who loudly denounce works written decades
> ago for not 
> upholding > current values regarding feminism,
> multiculturalism and 
> so forth.  I > mean, sure, note that the attitudes
> expressed in the 
> books would be > considered sexist, or racist, or
> whatever by today's 
> standards, but > don't denounce the writers for not
> anticipating 
> shifts in values > which occurred 50 years after
> their time.  Please.
> >
> 
> Thank you!  Isn't this called "historical
> imagination"?  At least, 
> that's what my AP American History teacher told us
> on the first day 
> of class back in '93--she was white, we were a very
> racially mixed 
> group who found the majority of the first 2/3s of
> our textbooks 
> offensive.  So she made what you said, Tabouli, her
> very first 
> lesson.  It worked... we had lots of fun in her
> course, for she was 
> an *excellent* teacher.  

This is basically a 'me,too'. I confess to owning (and
enjoying) several original Bobbsey Twins books and
such. I'm sure the author didn't know that times would
change and people would be condemning the way some of
the characters are portrayed.
> 
> Hmm.  There's a pretty bad racial slur on the last
> page of what might 
> have been one of my favorite Lucy Maud Montgomery
> books.  I still own 
> the book, but I must confess I've never re-read
> it... it spoiled the 
> entire novel for me.  My historical imagination is
> woefully deficient-
> -I *always* get extremely angry when watching movies
> about black 
> history (I cried and threw things all evening after 
> watching "Rosewood"--my roots are in Florida)--so I
> think I agree 
> with the spirit of "read it in the context of the
> values of the time" 
> more than I do the letter.  A bigot in 1701, 1801,
> and 1901 pisses me 
> off just as much as a bigot in 2001.

I watched 'Rosewood' when it first came out on The
Movie Network (it never made it into the theaters in
Ottawa). My best friend had told me it was an
incredible movie and said it made her feel 'ashamed to
be white'. I had read an article somewhere about the
movie, that interviewed some of the people who lived
through the events depicted and it was the article
that originally sparked my interest in seeing the
movie. 

I'll add a 'me, too' to your last statement above. I
remember saying at an AA meeting once that I always
thought I wasn't prejudiced, until I realised that I
despise narrow-minded people.
> 
> But some people go too far IMO.  My best friend from
> middle school, 
> who is biracial, told us one day when we were in
> sixth grade that her 
> parents TOSSED OUT her Little House on the Prairie
> series when they 
> found out about the minstrel show.  Never mind that
> minstrelsy is 
> part of America's cultural history... no study of
> the development of 
> the American theatre is complete without touching
> upon it.  Never 
> mind that the doctor who helped save Laura's family
> when they were 
> sick in Indian Territory was a black man... and LIW
> wrote this detail 
> in long before it was "PC" to do so.  
> 
> I think I agree with you, Tabouli.  I'd rather my
> children read about 
> the past and understand both its glory and its
> sordidness, than to 
> grow up ignorant of the trends that have influenced
> where we are at 
> this point in history.
> 
> --Ebony AKA AngieJ

Well said, Ebony. I encourage Nyssa to read both the
good and the bad. She has developed a fascination with
reading about concentration survivors and intends to
visit Dachau when my mother takes her to Europe for
graduation next year. All stemming from reading Anne
Frank's diary. 

Sheryll, rambling again, but wanting to agree with
what Ebony said so eloquently

=====
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."

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